Route selection or optimization has applications in vehicle routing, printed wire circuit layout, chip design and layout, and biological activities. Trucking and other vehicle fleets, for instance, select vehicle routes to deliver goods to various destinations. Similarly, transportation companies route vehicles to pick up and drop off passengers. In addition to land-based vehicles, route selection can also be used for ship, airplane, and rail transport route scheduling.
A typical route selection problem is to reduce or minimize the distance traveled or time spent traveling. Route selection problems might consider such factors as a number of turns in a given route, a number of intersections, speed limits, bridge crossings, and the like. Algorithms modeled using concepts from graph theory are often used to select routes.